A solid, traditional platformer made extraordinary through immersive narrative, a whimsical setting, and sheer creativity.

What better time than summer for a video game set at a summer camp? Psychonauts, the first game from development team Double Fine, takes place at a camp called Whispering Rock.



But Whispering Rock isn't just your standard wilderness retreat for youngsters; here kids are taught to harness their psychic abilities. Much like how Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp is more than just your standard summer camp, Psychonauts is much more than just a regular platform game.

The real beauty of Psychonauts comes from its environment. Tim Schafer, the mastermind behind the under-appreciated 1998 adventure game Grim Fandango, has created an amazing universe that is a pure joy to explore.



First of all, take the basic concept of the game. Psychonauts, which one can only presume is short for psychic astronauts, are psychic warriors who wage war inside of people's minds.

At Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp, campers are trained in the psychic arts to try to become one of these elite warriors. Enter Razputin (Raz for short), who ran away from the circus (an ironic twist, I know) to come to camp. His parents are coming in a few days, and so he has a very short time to become a Psychonaut. And thus you begin with his training, which all takes place inside his teachers' minds.



While inside somebody's mind, you help to clear up emotional baggage (represented by pieces of luggage separated from their identification tags) and have to deal with things such as mental cobwebs and brain censors (whose job is to destroy thoughts that shouldn't be there. However, if all of the censors are destroyed, things go terribly wrong). It is simply one of the most clever concepts for a video game that I have seen in a long time.



Each level within the game is vibrant, wild, and totally different than the last. To give you an idea, the first four minds you explore are a battlefield, a gigantic cube, a dark forest-like setting with gigantic pieces of meat sticking out of the ground, and a 70s dance club.



All of the characters you encounter – both at the Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp and within people's minds – are simply a hoot. Every single person you encounter always has something humorous to say, whether it's bully Bobby Ziltch threatening you with his violent threats (despite the fact that you have superior psychic powers) or a small boy describing his in-depth plan to get a look inside the girl's cabin by psychically inhabiting the mind of a squirrel.



Psychonauts plays like a stereotypical platform game. No more, no less. You make your way through the level, collecting a little of this and a little of that, solving simple puzzles and killing baddies. As the game progresses, you gain psychic abilities called Psi Powers such as pyrokinesis, invisibility, and levitation.



As already discussed, there are many things to collect within a level. One will find luggage tags and the matching emotional baggage (five pairs per level), vaults with legs that run away from you (and contain slide shows depicting one of the person's memories), and other such items.



Unlike some games where going on collection-fests just nets you a bonus movie or something like that, it is in your best interest to collect all of these little guys, as their rewards are quite real. Collecting figments, 2D semi-transparent objects found in every level, is one of two ways you can level up. The other is to collect Psi Cards; nine of them combined with a Psi Core (purchasable in the camp store) makes you level up. Gaining levels lets you acquire more psychic abilities.



The controls are fairly simple. The left analog stick moves Raz, the right one controls the camera, and the d-pad is used to navigate certain menus. The face buttons let you attack, jump, and interact with objects. Start gets you to the menu where you can save and quit and all of that good stuff, as well as giving you information on how you are doing. Pressing select pulls up your inventory and allows you to use an item. L1 targets an enemy, and the remaining three shoulder buttons trigger their assigned Psi Powers.



Perhaps it is just me, but I found it slightly difficult to hold down L1 to lock on to an enemy and then proceed to beat the hell out of the other shoulder buttons to attack with a Psi Blast or a different Psi Power.

The main draw of Psychonaut's graphics are their sheer wackiness, much like the other design aspects of the game. None of the kids at camp really look normal; the less-than-bright Dobin looks something like an egg with legs, and bully Bobby Ziltch sports blue-green skin and a flaming red afro.



The levels, as I have already described somewhat, are filled with vibrant colors and general wackiness. The 3D models aren't anything ground-breaking, but they look fine. From time to time the framerate seems to drop a bit, but it is still very playable. The only real issue is the unbearably long load times that appear fairly often.



The music in this game is spot-on. There is a wide variety of different styles and songs, and I am even tempted to buy the soundtrack from the developer's web site. The game features voice acting (voices are turned on by default, but in the options you can turn them off and/or turn on subtitles), which is also great. All of the voices seem perfect, from the archetype hero Raz to the various stereotypical campers to the over-militaristic Coach Oleander.



Although the gameplay mechanics stay firmly rooted in the tried-and-true, Psychonauts is really set apart by its narrative and environment. This is a rather bold statement, but I find Psychonauts to be the most fun traditional 3D platform game I have played on the current generation of consoles. This game just exuberates personality and character like I've never seen. If you own a PS2 (or Xbox or PC), you owe it to yourself to play this game.


Review by Michael Walker.